


an offer you can't refuse

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: ART!!!, Espionage, Gen, Humor, Politics, Propaganda, cleaning house in your father's regime, leaves you with a lot of positions to fill, pu-on tim's research was honestly incredible, the boy in the iceberg, theater people, timing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:08:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26787196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: “Pu-On Tim?” the masked figure asked. “Staff scriptmaster with the Ember Island Players? Writer of the play ‘The Boy In The Iceburg?’”“Y…yes?” He hoped that was the right answer. Trying to lie about it didn’t seem wise, considering they’d already found his bedroom.“We’re here on behalf of the Fire Lord.”
Comments: 26
Kudos: 225





	an offer you can't refuse

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposting this flashfic from tumblr. Going to try to post a bit more this autumn! Back in January before everything went crazy my New Years Resolution for 2020 was to hit 1 million words on AO3 this year; it was an extremely attainable goal at the time and I mean to still do it.

Pu-On woke up in the middle of the night to a cloaked, masked figure with a naked blade.

“Oh spirits,” he squeaked, after a second spent realizing that it wasn’t a cast member trying to be funny, and pulled the bedclothes up under his chin like that would help. “I-I’ll–” He wasn’t sure whether threatening to scream or offering not to was more likely to work out in his favor.

“Pu-On Tim?” the figure asked, in a hushed voice that made it hard to tell anything about it except that it wasn’t a bass-baritone and it was probably from around Caldera City, or trying to sound that way, which a lot of people did because the capital dialect was classy. “Staff scriptmaster with the Ember Island Players? Writer of the play ‘The Boy In The Iceburg?’”

“Y…yes?” He hoped that was the right answer. Trying to lie about it didn’t seem wise, considering they’d already found his bedroom.

“We’re here on behalf of the Fire Lord.”

The 'we’ made Pu-On take his eyes off the figure at his bedside and realize there was _another_ masked, cloaked figure lurking behind them, between him and the window. Oh, spirits. On behalf of the Fire Lord.

“Listen, he wasn’t written like that in the previous draft!” he blurted. “I know what you probably heard about the performance version, but that was just a matter of political exigency! I have nothing against Fire Lord Zuko!”

This was a slight exaggeration.

Prince Zuko had figured in the earliest stages of the script-writing as a quixotic, mildly absurd sympathetic figure, only to have to be rewritten with a character arc leading him toward inevitable betrayal, after his banishment became treason after the great Tragedy of the North. Only to be rewritten _again_ as the main hero of the piece, after he redeemed himself at Ba Sing Se.

Then not two weeks from opening night, on the Day of Black Sun, he’d turned on his father and joined forces with the Avatar, and Pu-On had had to hurriedly dig through his old drafts to restore less flattering dialogue, to spare himself having to fully rewrite all Zuko’s scenes _again._

Shun had barely slept for three days getting the rewritten part down. Pu-On had begun to feel personally martyred by Prince Zuko of the ever-changing allegiances.

He _might_ have made him a little more ridiculous than he’d had to, out of aggravation, but mostly in hopes of managing to get a watchable play in the end. A work focusing so much on enemies of the state had _had_ to be the broadest of comedy to begin with, if he wanted to avoid some sharp attention from the Ministry of Public Decency, and making the brooding Zuko character fit into that tone on short notice hadn’t been easy.

And then Sozin’s Comet had come, and they had a new Fire Lord.

He’d be lying if he said the possibility of reprisal hadn’t crossed his mind, but the new Fire Lord had by and large shown considerable restraint about actions performed under his father’s regime, even when he didn’t like them.

On the other hand, none of _that_ had been personal.

"It couldn't be helped,” he wheedled the two masked agents in his bedroom. “The Fire Lord knows his father’s laws, whatever I write has always had to conform with national policy.”

“Lord Zuko knows,” said the agent standing further back, in a low flat voice deeper than the the other agent's. “We’re just here to ask you a few questions.”

It was more than a few.

The questions started on the subject of his loyalties and political opinions; quick darting things trading off quickly from one interrogator to the next, clearly designed to push him past the usual mealy platitudes and into sincerity.

Pu-On had always been careful not to _have_ too many sincere political opinions, since they tend to seep into your work and that was how you got dragged off to the coal and sulfur mines, but they wrung a surprising amount of sincerity out of him through a combination of sneaky questions and his sheer terror.

Then, without his quite catching the instant of transition between subjects, they were asking him about the research he did for 'The Boy In The Iceburg,’ the various sources he listed as part of the script, and how he tracked them down and what he did to get accounts from them, as well as which of a long list of inaccuracies they cited in his script were intentional rhetorical devices and which the result of bad or no information on his part.

Toph the Earthbender’s height and gender were bad information he had recognized as such by comparison to other sources and used anyway; the mechanism behind her blindsight was pure supposition based on a text about bats. The agents were taking notes now. He found himself flattered, even though he knew this was unwise of him.

Pu-On had always been enthusiastic about his research process. He would have liked to go to university in his youth, if it were achievable for someone from his station of life, and he’d cribbed what academic tricks he could to bolster the story-collecting he’d started as a child, haunting wineshops with a notebook of his own. He took pride in his work.

So he almost forgot to be frightened at some point in this stage of the discussion, sitting fully upright in bed with the bedclothes pooled into his lap and gesticulating for emphasis.

“Prince Zuko’s hair!” he exclaimed. “Oh, _that_ was a dramatic saga in the version that had to be scrapped last. The information I’d put together on his movements after the Siege of the North showed he was growing it out for the first time since he was thirteen, after obviously cutting his phoenix tail to go into hiding. The…well, anyway, we had to make all new wigs for the actual performances.”

He remembered himself suddenly, clutching the edge of the blanket again. “I didn’t mean any harm,” he added. “Please, tell the Fire Lord…would he like another rewrite? I’d be happy to—”

He wouldn’t, he tore that play apart and cobbled it back together again so many times he’d prefer never to look at it again in his life.

In a few years he might go back over his notes and write something entirely new, but he was going to wait for the dust to settle first. Get a sense of the wind. Fire Lord Zuko had disrupted his work with dramatic upheavals enough times already. If only current events weren’t so irresistibly _exciting_ ; history was so much more accommodating about sitting still to be dramatized.

(Although even history was currently being heavily rewritten. School curricula were among the many things the new Fire Lord was overturning.)

“Maybe he would,” said the agent in the middle of the room. “You can ask him yourself.”

“I can?”

The agent beside his bed nodded, stuck their knife into what must be a hidden sheath at their hip (note: find out how that’s done, the effects crew would love a new technique for fake stabbings) and reached up to take their mask off.

Revealing a round-faced girl with grey eyes, her face altogether covered in a grin that was terrifying for no reason he could articulate. “Hi! I’m Ty Lee, and _you’re_ invited to join His Majesty’s secret intelligence service!”

**Author's Note:**

> The other person is probably Mai lol, Iroh can't be running the intelligence service from Ba Sing Se so I'm sure she's taking it over. So much housecleaning to do, gotta bring in some fresh talent. 
> 
> It was totally Zuko's idea to recruit Pu-On Tim tho. Imagine if he knew the Fire Lord actually saw the dratted play personally. 😂


End file.
